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“Okay, okay,” James waved his hands to get his friends to quiet down, “uh, Padfoot,” he turned his attention to his best friend, “truth or dare.”
“Truth,” Sirius answered. There was a bit of a drunken giggle with the reply. Normally he chose dare.
“Uh…oh!” James shifted to completely face the boy next to him. “Who do you have a crush on?” He was almost certain it was Remus and had been trying to get him to admit it for a year at this point.
“Do I have to? It’s so fucking embarrassing.” The dramatic whine came with hands covering his face. There were several cheers and jabs from all of them, including Lily. “Alright,” Sirius dropped his hands and refused to look at them. “It’s…Snivellus.” Everyone went quiet. “Honest. I don’t know why but he’s just…kinda cute.”
There was a snort of laughter from Lily at James’ side as she leaned around him to look at Sirius. A delicate flush was on her face from the alcohol. “I thought you liked guys?” She asked, vibrant green eyes staring.
“Uh, yeah, I do?”
“Then you can’t like Severus,” she said matter-a-factly. “He’s a girl.”
“Huh?”
Not even James could make out what the girl meant. Snape was a boy. She even used the pronoun for him. He shared a look with the others and got confused shrugs in response. “I’m serious,” Lily said while picking up her cup of firewhiskey. “He told me when we were thirteen. It’s a secret.” Despite it being a secret she didn’t look at all concerned about spreading it to the four of them.
“Why’s it a secret?” Remus asked softly. James could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to figure something out or connect dots no one else could see.
“Oh, his father didn’t want a daughter,” the girl said like she wasn’t breaking someone’s trust. “I used to help him hide it. Do you know how long it took me to convince him to swim with me over the summer? Six years!” She fell back on the pillows they had piled on the dormitory floor with a sigh. “I gave him some of Petunia’s old clothes last summer.”
“Lils, maybe you shouldn’t be telling us this,” James said, suddenly uncomfortable with the information. This was something very personal.
“Come off it,” Sirius said, “I wanna know more. I knew Snape was too pretty for a boy.”
There was another giggle from Lily. “He is, isn’t he?” She rolled over to bury her face into James’ thigh. “He was so much nicer when we were younger,” she sighed. “Ya know, his hair isn’t actually greasy. It’s really soft.” Another wistful sigh left her as she rolled again to be back on her back.
“Has he ever…acted like a girl?” Peter asked hesitantly.
“Not really,” Lily said, eyes closed and hand groping for James’. He gave it to her. “I mean, I taught him how to braid hair and other girly things once I found out but he didn’t really take to it.” She yawned and it was easy to tell that she was getting sleepy. Which was probably one of the reasons - other than alcohol - that she was even talking about this. “He doesn’t really get some of the finer points of being a girl. He spends nine months out of the year in the boys dormitory anyway so I didn’t expect much.”
James shared a look with Remus to find he wasn’t the only one thinking that this was more serious than Lily, Sirius, or Peter were making it out to be. They held a secret that could destroy Snape. Something like this getting out could ruin his life in more than one way. He could hardly wrap his mind around this new information about the boy that he used to mercilessly bully. It was a regret he would likely carry for a long while and this seemed to make the guilt worse. All of them had picked on Snape at one point or another and he could see now that he was probably going through so much already. This had to be something they kept quiet about at all costs.